OURSPACE: The Virtual Youth Space

OurSpace is an EU initiative that provides online means and supports the youth to: a) Express their thoughts on politics, society, economy; 2) Debate with decision-makers and young people across Europe; 3) Communicate the outcomes of the debates to the relevant National & EU institutions responsible for Youth affairs.

OurSpace embraces the success of social media as its key foundation for furthering eParticipation in two separate but equally important directions.

First of all, the project’s format as a social networking site, aiming to include the commonly used features such as user’s profile, invitations, posts, rating and statistics, is a way to appeal to young audiences that have been taking full advantage of similar sites in different areas.

OurSpace is reaching to wide audiences by its own Android App and a Facebook app, enabling mobile access to the platform and adjusting to the current trend that an increasing number of people use their mobile phones rather than their laptops to engage in online activities.

Secondly, the wide promotion of OurSpace on very popular social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, generates a wide user base from young audiences.

Having social media embedded at the core of the OurSpace design makes youth involvement in political and social debates more realistic and prevents the project from being rejected by its target users for being ‘old-fashioned’ and too complicated to use.

In short, OurSpace demonstrates the attempt to tailor traditional eParticipation tools based on the dominant trends of web 2.0.